Training range OK for whales, Navy says

Sunday

A Navy review has settled on the Florida-Georgia coastline as the site for anti-submarine training that many environmental activists fear will harm wildlife, particularly right whales.

An environmental impact report issued Friday said a training range that would start 50 nautical miles offshore could affect whales, but there would be steps to minimize that.

While critics have warned that sonar used at such a range could harm whales, the Navy said the effect on their hearing was "not expected to be significant."

The range, covering 500 square nautical miles, would be outfitted with about 300 underwater devices that would send and receive acoustic signals from ships and submarines there.

The report said the Jacksonville site "offers excellent training opportunities" and would be preferable to three others considered off the Carolinas and Virginia.

But activists and government agencies have raised a number of concerns. The most persistent involve harm to right whales, an endangered species totaling maybe 300 to 350 animals that bring their newborns to the Florida and Georgia coast each winter.

"We have here competing public interests - for national security and trained personnel and [for] preservation of creatures that are threatened by man's activity," said Tom Larson, chairman of the Northeast Florida Sierra Club.

The club, along with other groups, had urged the Navy to limit its training during the winter calving season.

That was among 10 suggestions the Navy rejected as impractical, in this case saying its existing training schedule is designed to prepare sailors for their duties and has no excess training that could be cut.

Other ideas that were rejected included setting special limits on sonar volume or ship speeds; surveying for whales before exercises; and adopting other navies' precautions.

The Navy rejects some of those because it needs to train crews in realistic conditions and meet overseas deployment schedules of many ships, subs and aviation units, the training range project manager, Jene Nissen, said in an interview last year.

The Navy has a number of whale-safety measures, including use of lookouts to watch for the animals. Their locations are routinely reported so other vessels can avoid them.

Project supporters describe the training range as a critical need because of the spread of quieter diesel-powered subs among the navies of developing states, including China and Iran.

Supporters also note that the range would be dozens of miles from the near-shore area where whale researchers have typically spotted them most often. The Navy is financing new research on protected species in the area the training range would cover.

Environmentalistswho sought an injunction to stop sonar use in training off California lost in front of the Supreme Court last year. A separate court case involving training near Hawaii was settled with sonar use continuing.

But in January, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it would re-examine the Navy's plans for mitigating effects of sonar training in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. NOAA's findings will be reported to the influential White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Activists are hoping those findings will provide new support for extra safeguards, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, Taryn Kiekow, said in an interview this month.

An attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, Catherine Wannamaker, said that apart from activists' worries, "the Navy also refuses to meaningfully address the strong concerns ... of the states of Georgia and Florida."

Both states filed reports last year listing concerns and unanswered questions they had about the project.

The Navy sent each state a letter in April saying it had concluded the project would not interfere with far-ranging coastal management plans the states had developed - a conclusion that's legally needed before the project can start.

Florida's Department of EnvironmentalProtection answered last month that it couldn't tell for sure, because the Navy hadn't provided the information the state requested to evaluate the plan.

The impact statement does not commit the Navy to building the range. A final Navy sign-off on the project, called a record of decision, must be done this summer before work can begin.

steve.patterson@jacksonville.com,

(904) 359-4263

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